Tragedy and Irony in America’s Presidential Politics

Weekends are often points for transitions. The past one certainly is proving so. One man, close to being eased out of the White House, hasn’t appeared this presidential in months. Taking a superb opportunity to reunite the nation, his words are replete with authority and resolve. With his unlimited powers, he launches an intensive investigation. More

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Weekends are often points for transitions. The past one certainly is proving so. One man, close to being eased out of the White House, hasn’t appeared this presidential in months. Taking a superb opportunity to reunite the nation, his words are replete with authority and resolve. With his unlimited powers, he launches an intensive investigation. In his guileless style, he personally phones the victim. His nemesis meanwhile – our last imagine of him, visibly bloodied in an assassination attempt, and fist raised – looks likely to stride more firmly across the finish line.

Doddery Joe Biden looks stronger; so does wounded Donald Trump. Both men will doubtless invoke the pregnant emotions released by Saturday’s shooting to rally his base. Joe calls for caution. Trump cries ‘fight’ to his audience. His increased popularity is likely, reviewing others leaders who sustained physical attacks.

By Monday morning, both the whispers and open calls for Biden to retire have vanished. If there are murmurs from the left, it is that Trump may well benefit from the murderous threat to his seemingly inviolable mission.

I couldn’t suppress an ironic smirk as I listened to how one avowedly left-liberal, assertively-Trump-hating morning talk show participants (WAMC Roundtable in New York) pulled every thread of liberalism from the folds of their stunned brains to assert the greatness of our political system, the need to denounce political violence, the prudence of our incumbent president. (Their daily flood of political rhetoric evaporates; they join in condemning violence.)  Surfing from one station to another, I think I also detected more than one misidentification—the assassination was on a ‘president Trump’ – not candidate Trump or former president Trump. Woops.

Surely I am not the only one imaging a really scary scenario if, if, Trump had been killed. Namely, civil war: millions of Republicans, with or without arms, descending on every DNC campaign center, on the offices of NYT and other media outlets, on agents of the security services, on any target they associate with those who railed against Donald Trump. Any press assembled for the RNC rally in Milwaukee would have checked out. Elected Democratic representatives at any level of government would need extra security.

Even without this awful scenario, especially fearful ‘liberals’, clutching their ‘seditious’ books and their rainbow flags while citing rising sales of firearms, had already been imagining a civil war in the streets of their shaky comfort zones. I had always felt those fears exaggerated. Not now. And not because they were prescient. Because they themselves are, in my experience, a major source of divisiveness, regularly spewing ugly, hateful words – intolerant, ignorant, politically ill-informed rantings against Republicans. Democrats dwell in a self-congratulatory ‘intellectual’ bubble unable to talk with anyone who might disagree with them. You must support Democrats, I’m told – however many wars they fund, however many homeless we have, however unchecked our capitalistic greed, however greater our budget for wars, police, and prisons, however many embargoes we level against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and others.

Did a 20-year-old killer with a gun really set a new agenda? While there will be more funds allocated for more policing and greater surveillance everywhere, Joe Biden has a reprieve. He’s now certain to be the Democratic Party candidate.

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